Our Lucky Day

9-11 was a horrifying day for New York, for our nation, for
families who lost someone they loved; but it was a lucky day for the Tobey
family. We felt the cross hairs in the sighting scope sweep across our lives.
We heard the soft click of the range-finder. But we all lived.

Amy was at work at the Salomon, Smith, Barney offices, eight
blocks north of the World Trade Center. She jogged that morning from Brooklyn
Heights into Manhattan, around the World Trade Center, about 7 a.m., then back
to Brooklyn. After changing into her work clothes at her apartment, she
returned to her office on the island. David was dressing for classes at his
dormitory a block from the WTC. I was home. I arrived the previous evening on a
flight home from Boston.

Amy was in the corporate cafeteria, paying for her morning
breakfast, when she heard a thunderous, resonating boom. She walked over to the
cafeteria window. A huge, jagged hole had been created by the crash of the
first airplane and now exploded into flames in the North Tower. A woman beside
her said she had seen a plane hit the tower a moment earlier. Amy could not
believe that. She hoped it was not a bomb. She went to the bond trading
floor.

Near her station, her colleagues were watching the news on
televisions. There had indeed been an airplane. For a minute, Amy was
relievedat least it was not a bomb, it was an accident. With other
workers, she left the building to watch the fire from out-of-doors. She
witnessed persons jumping from the highest floors. She hoped to herself that
this was not an attack on New York.

After a few minutes, the second plane rammed the South Tower. From
her perspective north of the Center, Amy could not see plane enter the tower.
She heard another deep boom, then the flaming explosion from the north face of
the South Tower. A coworker, who was listening to a radio, said that another
plane had rammed the tower. There could be no doubt then. New York was under
attack.

She knew she should leave the city. She returned to her building
to get her backpack and Blackberry messager. She walked out of the building,
walked across lower Manhattan, across the Manhattan Bridge. On the bridge, she
turned around to view the fires. The South Tower started to fall. All of her
senses were seemed abnormally enlivened. Huge plumes of gray smoke were
billowing up and over the city. The collapsing tower created winds that sounded
like a hurricane. The first acrid odors of burning plastic and cementan
aroma that would haunt lower Manhattan for weekswere reaching out toward
her. She continued across the bridge to her apartment in Brooklyn Heights.

David was grooming in the dorm floor bathroom before going to
classes. A policeman ran down the hall, knocking on doors, ordering immediate
evacuation. David left quickly. He took only the clothes he was wearing. He
didn't think to take his wallet. His roommate had already fled.

Outside the building, he watched terrified persons throw
themselves from the upper floors. A woman threw herself into his arms, sobbing,
saying that her husband was in that building. He watched the second plane hit
the South Tower. The police told the crowd to leave the area. David started
walking north, toward the Pace main campus at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I was in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that weekend, visiting my
college friend, Chad. Britta and his son and daughter had arranged a surprise
party for Chads 60th birthday. I couldn't resist going. I did not want
the last occasion we saw each other to be at a funeral. My presence surprised
him, indeed. He was delighted by the large party of his friends. And I also had
a wonderful visit with my cousin, Mike Gonnerman, and his wife, Betsy, with
whom I stayed in Sudbury.

Elisabeth made my travel arrangements. Originally, she planned for
me to return home by taking a Tuesday morning nonstop flight on American
Airlines out of Logan AirportSeptember 11.

But before I left for the trip, she changed that flight to Monday
afternoon, September 10. To save money, she booked a flight on American Trans
Air that stopped in Chicago Midway. She was going on a trip later that week and
wanted me home a day earlier to help her get ready for it. She picked me up at
the airport late Monday evening.

I talked continually with Amy and David during their evacuations
out of Manhattan. Amy sent email messages to me with her Blackberry email
pager. She typed and sent messages as she walked. I checked my computer email
every few minutes to receive her messages and to respond. She and I exchanged a
dozen email over the course of the day. She left her apartment and went to a
cafe in Brooklyn to be with other people and to watch the events on television.
I asked her to return to her apartment, as I would try to get David there to
join her.

Out of his dorm, David called me at home, collect on our credit
card, from a public phone. He knew that I was in Boston over the weekend. He
thought I was going home that Tuesday morning. He left a message asking about
my safety on our upstairs answering machine, but I did not notice it until late
in the day.

He called again, after he was asked to leave the WTC area. At this
point, the city was beginning to block off the lower Manhattan, south of Canal
Street. I was watching the horrifying events reveal themselves on CNN. I asked
David to call me at least once an hour. (It was impossible for me to phone into
the City.) I would tell him what CNN was reporting about open and closed routes
out of Manhattan and guide him to Brooklyn.

He went to a nearby police station and identified himself as a
Pace student. The police told him that Pace was arranging to take students from
his dorm to a dorm on Staten Island. This never happened; perhaps the ferries
to Brooklyn were shut down. Probably the collapse of the Towers interfered with
the plan, because the ferries and bridges to Staten Island were reserved for
emergency vehicles.

He went to a hotel to get a room to stay in, if he couldn't get
out of Manhattan. The hotel lobby was packed with Trade Center refugees. The
hotel had already rented out all its rooms. He started to walk toward Brooklyn.
At several intersections, streets were cordoned off. After four hours, he made
his way to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a walk he made in half an hour on an
ordinary day. At the foot of bridge, a van from a Temple in Brooklyn picked him
up (he was wearing a kippa), and dropped him off near his sisters
apartment. Shortly thereafter the Brooklyn Bridge was closed.

David and Amy were safe and together in Brooklyn in early
afternoon. Only then did I cry. I wept all afternoon. And I cried frequently,
daily, for the next week.

They reacted courageously in their own ways to the events. Neither
has been detered from choosing their future. Amy worked in the SSB group that
finances airplanes. With three colleagues, she closed a $2 billion deal for BAE
Systems five months earlier. She flew frequentlyoften weeklyin the
US and to Europe on business.

She became desperately afraid of flyingbut fly she did. She
came home at the end of September for a visit, loaded with tranquilizers to
make the trip. While home, she bought two gas masks (one for work and one for
her apartment). New York City stores were sold out of masks.

The murders empassioned David's Zionism. He wants to go to Israel
and join the Army to serve in the tank corps. Elisabeth spent hours on the
phone in November persuading him to stay in school and not go to Israel until
he finishes college. He honors her request. He took a class on the Israeli
militarys art of self-defense and started body-building at the college
gym. He is determined. I ask him about the day, but he finds it difficult to
talk about it.

As an atheist, secular humanist, and nonspiritual person, which I
am, I have difficulty finding an appropriate vocabulary for our experiences on
September 11.

We were all lucky. Liz was lucky, too, not to be a widow grieving
for her two children. To say we were lucky is, however, inadequate. Was it a
roll of the dice of destiny? We won three successive rolls. Thats true,
but meaningless. It does not reach toward the gratitude we feel. Religious
vocabulary is about all there is. So here it is.

God did not look away from us on September 11. For whatever
purposes the Deity might have for us, which we await, we were destined to wake
up on Wednesday morning, praise the sunlight, and write letters to our friends
and family to thank them for being part of our lives. To saywe will see
you next year when, God willing, we shall visit you and New England.

Ronald Tobey

This meditation was sent in slightly different version to family
and friends, Christmas 2001. Since then, Amy has taken a leave from her career
in the banking business. She will spend a year travelling around the world.
David has left dormitories for an apartment in the heart of Brooklyn.